It’s all very well and good, I cut Maya with my words, but Ido happens to be a man, and he certainly understands all the rules of this little battle, he understands maybe even more than what you might guess, because you came from a house all made of honey and cotton balls, she never even got one healthy slap from her parents, but I don’t expect you to understand that, either, none of you are capable of understanding
When I saw that no one would help me get out of Beit Zayit, I returned home and stood in the garage; what am I worth if I can’t do this?
While speaking with her, I ran to the window and saw that he was lying on the chair again, curled up, mumbling to himself, playing with a long branch, poking it into the streams of water running under the chair, strangely quiet, and I thought he might already be in shock from the cold
The old Mini started up immediately. There was even half a tank in it. Amos, Amos, you’re the best, I am so lucky, a clumsy, lucky woman
I hung up on Maya and ran outside; on my way, I grabbed a blanket that was on the washing machine. I spread it over him, and he didn’t even look at me. I said his name, and he didn’t answer me. So I sat by his chair in the water, and looked at him, and in my heart I said again, Say it, say you’re sorry
A strange thought passed through me, that now I would need both of them together, Amos and Yair, and that now Yair would have to stay with me, he wouldn’t be able to deny me anymore
I want to bring you my stupidity, even, and my enthusiasm, my cowardice and my treachery—and the miserliness of my heart. But I also have two or three good things in me that could mix with all your goodness. Let my fears mate with yours, our disappointments and failures, and failing again and again—correct me if I’m wrong. Correct me.
Be with me. Revive me. Tell me: Be light
But what have I already given you? Just words, and what can words
They can probably do it at some time, perhaps there are moments of grace, when heaven opens up on the earth, as well
I slowly pushed his chair under the eaves, so he wouldn’t get wetter; hard rain fell on me, and in a moment I began to freeze with the cold.
Ido was looking at me from wrapped up in the blanket, and for a moment I was afraid that his pupils had become cloudy
I drove slowly through the roundabout, praying that no one would come toward me; I decided not to think about the actions I had to do, to let my instinct guide me, because I suddenly trusted it, my instinct
I don’t know if he was having a hard time recognizing me because of his cloudiness, or because of how I looked, because I was completely unrecognizable at that point, and I saw his body stiffen in front of me
How lucky that I rode past his house that night two weeks ago, to see his street and his house, the entire journey from me to him
As if he was tensing up for a blow from me, even though I have never raised a hand to him; after all, I am not my father
I was driving in waterfalls; I thought about how sometimes Yair looks like a spoon that has broken in two inside a teacup
I was hoping he couldn’t see how the muscles in my face were starting to shake, as they always do when I’m cold, I mustn’t be cold
Rain hit the windshield hard; I’ve never seen Jerusalem like this, so diagonal through the rain
He pushed himself up a little onto the chair, and saw I was only in my underwear, and then he asked me, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, if he too could be this way, without clothes
In my heart I was talking to the child, to Ido; hold on, I told him, I’m coming
So I took a deep breath, with the vestiges of my ability to think, I responded, quietly, that perhaps he hasn’t been able to understand me until now, perhaps he was so stupid that he couldn’t understand such simple words, but if he gets up now, I will even help him inside, and together we will go to the door and knock, we’ll even say we’re sorry together
The entire time I knew, with a terrible clarity, that all this would never have happened if today wasn’t “the last day”
I didn’t have any choice. What choice did I have? Because he wasn’t at all ready to hear about saying he was sorry, and I thought I mustn’t stay beside him for even one more moment, because I didn’t know what I would do to him, and I got up and went inside, and leaned on the door, and I saw a little puddle gathering around my feet
But when did it begin, when could it have happened, maybe when he was writing my diary in Tel Aviv
I stood in the doorway and explained from far away that he was wrong if he thinks Mother will come to help him, because Mother is in Safed and she will return only at night, so now the only people left are him and me, without Mother
Maybe the day he told me his name? And how could “it” hold on and survive through the whole period of his silence
He didn’t answer me. Perhaps he could feel how he was breaking me even more, I asked him if he understood what I was saying, if he was strong enough to walk from the chair to the door to knock on it, because all of a sudden it seemed a huge distance
Perhaps only after I started copying down his letters, and our words mixed together, or when I started writing my own diary
I slowly slid down the door and sat on the ground, and explained to him, quietly and considerately, that we has to help each other now, because something has happened here, a complication has come up; I will explain to you how such a thing can happen in life later, someday I will explain to you, someday you will understand, you will even thank me for not giving in to you
I saw a flash of myself in the rearview mirror, like a plucked chicken, wet; my nose was red like it always is when I’m cold, and I thought, What will he think of me, and I thought that he is still so very young
He got off the chair and lay at my feet on the ground, purposely laid himself down in the water, purposely turned his back on me and curled up again and didn’t move, and I wasn’t cold anymore, I thought it was strange how you stop feeling anything, I was left only with the hope that he wouldn’t die on me, in front of my eyes
I pitied the child who is reneging on a debt he doesn’t even know about, the way children usually do
As much as I tried, I couldn’t grasp how such a horror was happening to our family, that no one could hear or see what was going onhere, where were all the neighbors, and just people, the witnesses, where
I ran, steps going down into the yard
So strange, I could see drops hitting my body, but didn’t feel them, the rain washed down and got into the house, inside blurred into outside and became one, I saw that I wasn’t understanding anything, and closed my eyes and just stopped
As I ran down the steps, I saw both of them in one glance, Yair and the child, separated by maybe three steps; they were lying in that little yard, lying in water, twisted at a horrible angle to each other like two bent nails. Yair was naked and blue from the cold, his ribs were poking out and he hardly moved, his eyes were squeezed shut. Ido lay beside a wicker chair, covered with a blanket, and I remember how surprised I was to see him wrapped up, protected—rain hit the wall of the house, splashing hard on Yair, and me. I thought: We meet in water, we meet at the end as we did in the beginning, inside a story he wrote for us. He opened his eyes and looked at me for a moment, and closed them again in pain. I saw his lashes tremble, and he bawled out, a cry I have never heard from a grown-up, and he said my name again and again and again. I also remember that, before I hurried to his child, before I touched Yair, my eyes were drawn briefly to their hands, Yair’s and Ido’s; they were bluish, transparent from the cold, and resembled each other marvelously; they both had long, beautiful fingers, long and thin and fragile
February 1998
Also by David Grossman
NOVELS
The Smile of the Lamb
See Under: LOVE
The Book of Intimate Grammar
The Zigzag Kid
NONFICTION
Yellow Wind
Sleeping on a Wire
Death as a Way of Life
BE MY KNIFE. Copyright © 1998 by David Grossman. Translation copyright © 2001 by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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[email protected] First published in Israel under the title She-tehi li ha-sakin
by Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Ltd.
eISBN 9781466803718
First eBook Edition : November 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grossman, David.
[She-tehi li ha-sakin. English]
Be my knife / David Grossman. p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-42147-8
I. Title.
PJ5054.G728 S5413 2002
892.4’36—dc21
2001033645
David Grossman, Be My Knife
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